The Birds Of St. Marks Poem by Bernard Henrie

I take the dawn flight to Venice,
Baedeker memorized, wife packed like lunch.
A spy in the blue miasma hung on the town.

Noisy vaporetto along the Grande Canal,
fat wrist trailing over the gunwale
into pearly lagoon;

assassins coil to strike in silted basements,
poison paste in the roasted, steaming duck.
Cloak face down in the listless sea;

leaves and sighs, the rustle of cassock
and trimmed candle, plod and null of lives
unchanged like the frescoes of Villa Narcisse;

girls slender as Latin prayer books,
ancient women, hands coiled politely
like ferns in the black apron of their laps.

I spare myself nothing.
Sleep naked on a rosette veranda,
divorce, marry for money, or not;

Don't wave off the birds in St Marks
—silliness makes me call them plovers.
Feathers mottled, some fallen out;

plovers thrashing at grave's end
hover over my head, beckon.
White arch of wings;

Venice, let down your cardinal lift,
take your Lazarus blimp home
over the velveteen stones.